


found

by Aquaphobe



Series: lost & found [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Animal Abuse, Animal Death, Blood and Violence, Emotional Manipulation, Eventual Harry Potter/Tom Riddle, Gore, M/M, Mob Boss Tom Riddle, Murder, Obsession, Possessive Tom Riddle, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Slow Burn, This Gets Really Freaking Dark, Tom Riddle is a Bastard, Torture, i apologise in advance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:02:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26396092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aquaphobe/pseuds/Aquaphobe
Summary: Tom knows from the beginning that he is destined for greatness. Nothing and no one will stop him from achieving his goals.(And then, of course, there are the dreams.)
Relationships: Bellatrix Black Lestrange/Tom Riddle, Harry Potter/Tom Riddle, Harry Potter/Tom Riddle | Voldemort, Tom Riddle/Hepzibah Smith, Tom Riddle/Mulciber
Series: lost & found [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1918429
Comments: 12
Kudos: 72





	1. the perfect halo

**Author's Note:**

> after rereading my old Tom/Harry fic, _lost_ , i was overwhelmed with the unreasonable urge to write a oneshot set in the same universe, from Tom's pov! only... it didn't stop growing. and it... kept getting darker.
> 
> currently 20,000 words in, and severely worried for what this fic says about my imagination. (nothing good, that's for sure..)
> 
> so that i'm being perfectly transparent, **THIS FIC GETS VERY DARK VERY QUICK.** please just... be mindful of the tags.

Tom has been searching, all of his life, for fulfillment.

He knows from the beginning, that he is destined for greatness. An unwanted child left in an overcrowded London orphanage, thinking that they're special... yes, yes, how _clichéd_ , he _knows_. But Tom's different, he _is_. He repeats it to himself like a mantra, as he searches for his purpose.

*

From the day that he's old enough to hold a book, he's fascinated. Words seem so powerful to him, and the idea that squiggles of ink can tell a story is wonderful. He learns to read with fervour. By the age of four when he starts his first year of primary school, he's already outpaced many of the older children. Come Christmas, it becomes apparent that Tom has taken every class in stride. Not just Reading, but Art and Maths and Music too, bland though all the lessons are. The teachers talk with Mrs Cole about bumping him up by a year. It isn't long before he's moved to Year Two, and by the end of the final academic term, they're discussing pushing him up again.

This pleases Tom, because whatever tripe they feed him in his lessons, he finds it is not enough. Understanding the subjects comes as naturally to him as breathing, and all of the facts that they teach, he absorbs like a sponge. His thirst for knowledge - for a challenge, _any_ challenge - is ravenous. He gluts himself on school work, and then he begs access to the upper school library and into Homework Club. He begs to join the lunchtime French Club. He begs for private tutoring.

Tom learns that he has a way with words, that adults especially - perhaps with the exclusion of Mrs Cole, who is a crone by anyone's account - are weak to his requests. He need only ask, and play up the fact that he is a poor orphan, that he's a good boy who just wants so _desperately_ to learn... and they crumble. Adults scramble over themselves to give him what he wants. And so access to books written for older children, and the privilege to sit in on club activities that usually have to be paid for, are at his fingertips. He thinks, surely, this will be enough; it is not.

It's funny how, as the adults cave to his every whim, as he proves himself smarter than the other children in Wool's Orphanage and the other children in his classes - by this point two years older than him - that they slowly begin to notice him. Unlike the grown-ups, their attention is not favourable, or in the least bit useful.

They kick and hit and push him when the adults aren't looking. They tear pages from his books. They fill his school shoes with mud. Draw on his P.E. shirt with black markers. Put worms in his bed.

At first they call him a teacher's pet. When he does not react the way that they expect him to, with tears and snot and wailing, they call him 'freak' instead.

It doesn't upset Tom. In fact, the name makes something burn in his blood. It feels _right_ when they use that word. It is the first thing that ever truly does, and it sparks something to life inside of him.

A new challenge, then.

One of the older boys tries to shove him down the stairs on Wool's front porch and his friends guffaw, so Tom retaliates. He punctures their football, snaps off the wheels on their toy cars. He crushes crayons up against their bedroom walls in childish patterns he knows will get them into trouble with the grown-ups, and he revels in listening to Mrs Cole telling them off.

The younger girls gather together to point and snicker when he's tripped over in the courtyard by one of the teenagers, Sue Bruthers. He tears the heads off of the younger girls' dolls and melts them in the oven. Nobody notices until the room is filled with black smoke. He presses his ears to their doors and listens as they cry, as they plead innocent to the act and throw the blame on the boys and the carer on duty in the kitchen rebukes them. When Sue Bruthers and her roommates are away late into the evening on a school trip, he breaks into their room and shreds all of her skirts and dresses with a pair of nail scissors - it is slow, laborious work, but it satisfies the itch.

After those incidents, the spark begins to die down - he chases after it with a sort of rapacious need.

He steals Jenny Robinson's teddybear, the last thing her mother gave her before she was brought here, after she knocks his juice onto his homework. He doesn't care whether or not she does it on purpose.

When little Mischa Collins won't stop bawling for an entire afternoon, he pinches her so hard that she bruises - gives her something to _really_ cry about.

Max Griffith can't keep out of Tom's room, can't keep his sticky hands off of Tom's stuff, so Tom slams his fingers in his bedroom door. He satisfies himself with the sound of cracking bones and the strangled scream of pain.

Billy Stubbs calls him a freak, his _very_ favourite word; Tom hangs his pet rabbit from the rafters of the shed at the bottom of the garden. He stands, chest heaving, eyes gleaming, and watches the body swing.

Dennis Bishop and Amy Benson trap him in the bathroom at school so that he gets in trouble for missing all of his lessons. They are smart enough to pair up when they do it, and they threaten Tom, saing they'll tell on him to an adult if he tries to retaliate. It doesn't matter. Tom is patient, and the wait makes his bones itch with the need for retribution. He watches them, and he acts sweetly. He practices his charms on them until they, too, fall under his thrall. They try to apologise for picking on him, they act as if they are his friends. That summer, during their trip to the seaside, Tom leads them down to a cave overlooking the ocean, and traps them there until the tide rolls in, right up to their shoulders. They scream and scream and scream, and Tom laughs, watching as the water climbs higher...

By the time he lets them out, they're gibbering, unable to formulate words. He tells them that if they ever do, he'll cut out their tongues while they sleep.

Tom is never caught, not by the adults, but the other children know he did it. At first he finds playing with them this way, _punishing_ them, to be fun. He chases the thrill of their tears, of their wide-eyed fear... and then it grows dull. Predictable.

After a while, the other children leave him alone. He lets them. He has no use for things that won't fill in the emptiness.

When he sleeps, he dreams strange things. He dreams of dark corridors and snakes, of graveyards and magic. And a boy.

He forgets the dreams upon waking.

For a while, he seeks to sate his curiosity by catching animals from the street, and dragging them away to quiet parts of the nearest park. Killing Billy Stubbs' rabbit made that warmth flicker to life in his chest, so it stands to reason that playing with other animals will, too. Besides, he never got a good look at the rabbit - he's curious to see the way they twitch, the way they work. He's seen anatomy pictures in the biology textbooks that the secondary schoolers get, and in an old collection of art magazines. Diagrams of skeletons and muscles and internal organs. It's fascinating, and there's so much in there that he wants to see with his own eyes.

Insects, he learns quickly, are no fun. They have little reaction to being killed other than a brief recoil when he pulls off their legs or stabs at them with sharp sticks. Worms flinch and curl. Slugs foam. Snails pull back into their shells. When he pulls the wings off of butterflies, they flail uselessly, but he isn't convinced it's because they feel the pain, so much as it is an innate, low functioning instinct that tells them to get away.

Briefly he finds solace in feeding bluebottles and daddy longlegs to spiderwebs, enjoying the way that the buzz of their wings grows louder as they fight with the resident spider for freedom. He also learns quickly that putting ants from one mound in the path of another causes an all-out war. He gathers up a jar full of the small, nippy red ants from the Orphanage courtyard and takes them to the front street, where he pits them against the larger-bodied black ants. Watching them latch onto each other is at first thrilling, but after a while, it leaves him bored. In the end he finds the most pleasure in pouring boiling, soapy water directly into the anthills and supervising as the entire colonies swarm out through cracks in the paving.

Even that, though, fails to hold his interest.

The first _real_ animal he catches is a toad, fat and slow, lumbering through a hedge in the schoolyard. He takes it home in the ant jar, anticipation rushing in shivers down his limbs. It squeals and flails and voids its bladder. It has little fight in it though, and after picking it over for a time, he tosses it aside.

The next he gets his hands on is a mouse. Its neck breaks too easily when he's rough with it, and the little lolling body is too delicate to make much sense of.

One day he finds an injured pigeon on the edge of the road, clearly having had a close encounter with a car. It's alive when he finds it, but its dark little eyes are unresponsive, even when he twists its broken wing. Its chest rises and falls in gasping breaths, and by the time he thinks up what he wants to do with it - pull out all it feathers to see if it resembles a chicken carcass - the thing is already dead. A disappointment, but still.

He doesn't waste its corpse - he plucks every feather on its wing and lays them out like puzzle pieces. They're soft - he brushes his fingertips over them repeatedly and selects several to hold onto as keepsakes. The only other thing of interest is the creature's clubfoot - some form of disease that isn't uncommon to see in city birds. Eventually, he confirms that birds are rather dull. There is little about them that captures their interest - especially not if they are all prone to dying of shock as quickly as the pigeon did.

If he could get his hands on something _larger_ , he thinks...

When he catches his first rat, quick and brown and vicious, he finds some fun in torturing it. It's bigger than the toad and the mouse, and has more fight in it than the pigeon did. He enjoys taking it apart, and by the time it dies, he feels almost fond of the horrid, worm tailed thing - and in a flash of inspiration, he removes the tail to have as a keepsake. He thinks regretfully that he should have done this to the toad or the mouse, too. Still, opening the rat up makes his breath quicken. He wants to draw references and diagrams. He keeps _that_ body in a shoebox in his wardrobe for two days as he studies it, and then when it begins to soak through the card and stink the room up with the sickly sweetness of decaying meat, he tosses its slimy, bloated body into the neighbouring garden.

The success feeds the ravine inside of him. He yearns to catch bigger prey, to _properly_ challenge himself. He remembers the way that Dennis and Amy screamed, the way they cower when he comes near them now, and it makes his blood rush.

Eventually, he catches an alley cat. It's a mangy thing with rusty orange fur, bald patches and torn up ears. A tom, he thinks, from the roundness of its face and the thickness of the skin at its neck. It's battered from years of brawling and it has a limp in its back leg (the reason that Tom is able to catch it in the first place), but it is aggressive and strongwilled. He spends hours with the thing, crooning sweet nothings as he plays his games, as he watches the spark in its eyes fade.

When it finally goes, the dear, precious thing, he takes his time to properly dissect it, extracting the bigger organs and referring to one of the biology textbooks. The innards are _fascinating_ , if not a little too messy for his liking. He removes one of the dewclaws for his private collection and likes to retrieve it late at night, running the sharp tip over the pad of his thumb.

Tom gives the cat a proper sendoff by breaking into Mrs Cole's room and splaying the corpse out beneath her sheets like some kind of sacrificial offering, painting its fur in stripes of Billy's favourite blue oil paints. Mrs Cole has been nothing but a hindrance to his learning as he's gotten older, and she is always quick to lay blame on Tom's shoulders. She needs to be punished, and _he_ thinks that this is a fine time to reestablish his good reputation. Billy already has the reputation of an animal killer, so pinning the blame on him is easy.

Later that week Billy Stubbs is removed from Wool's, a red-eyed, broken shell of the bully he once was. Tom watches from one of the upstairs windows and feels proud but, ultimately, a little disappointed. It's not _fun_ when they don't fight back.

Life, bland and meaningless, continues on. For a while after that, his interest in killing falls away. He wants smarter prey, something that would really challenge him, like a fox, or a dog... or a human. His blood warms at the thought. He feels feverish. But, he reminds himself, he needs to be careful in how he catches it. Tom will have to wait, will have to plan it meticulously.

And still, he dreams. A house on a hill. The hiss of words in a language he does not recognise. The flash of a silver hand. A statue at the end of a long, shadowy chamber.

Green eyes. Pale skin. A _scar_.

The dreams stick with him a little longer after he wakes up, though they are fuzzy. They make him restless, uncomfortable in his own skin.

*

Tom, at 13 years old, is happiest on his own. He finds little interest in any of the school clubs that once held his fascination, and he prefers the public library over the secondary school affair, full as it is with simplified subjects and too many pointless books of children's fiction.

The only books of fiction, poetry or theology that ever interest him are the ones he has to work to understand: the works of Shakespeare, Longfellow, Pope, Scott, Shelley, Tennyson. Dante's _Inferno_ , Milton's _Paradise Lost_. He develops a fascination for Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.

The one novel that really sticks with him, though, is Nabakov's _Lolita_. It's the description of the protagonist, Humbert's, enduring obsession and fascination with Lolita rather than the girl herself, that intrigues him. Tom has no interest in paedophilia, and really no sexual desires at all, as far as he can tell. But he _does_ find Humbert's persistent fascination and his all-consuming desire to possess, relatable. He reads it over and over, his hands shaking, his face flushed with _recognition_.

And then, like all things, his interest drops away. He fantasises, again, of killing. Of stalking and trapping and controlling. He wants to break someone, he wants to own them body and soul... maybe then, he would feel complete.

By the time he's a little older, he's secluded himself from all the other children in Wool's Orphanage, and from his classmates. He's three years ahead of the other children his age and, at 15-years-old, he's approaching the end of his time in secondary school. He's long since completed his O Levels, and his A Levels have been an equally disappointing affair, requiring little of his attention.

He spends his free time poring over extra schoolwork, over textbooks and newspapers and gossip rags and advanced studies. Academic essays, dusty old censuses, psychology papers. Old exam sheets, financial journals, cookbooks, dictionaries, encyclopedias, geological surveys, the _Bible_... everything and anything he can get his hands on he devours, stuffing his mind full to overflowing.

The more he learns - the more he tries to stem the ache of his incompleteness - the wider that the hole inside of him yawns. He has not felt that sparking drive of _yes yes yes_ in years.

Tom graduates from secondary school with the highest grades in his year group, at the very top of his classes. In the last months of his schooling, he applies for scholarships for all of the universities, and for bursaries, for grants. Somehow he scrapes enough aide together to move. He is accepted into the University of Strathclyde, in Glasgow - as far away from London as he can possibly get - and he packs his entire life away into a duffel bag and a battered old suitcase.

As he leaves the Orphanage, he does not look back. While he's legally bound to it until he hits the age of majority, he has no intention of ever returning. He has no sentimental ties, he thinks, to London at all.

*

And still, of course, he dreams.


	2. a distant echo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to everyone who kudos'd, followed, bookmarked and commented last chapter, and for giving this awful fic a chance!! you're all wonderful!! <33
> 
> and to clear up any confusion (because i forgot to mention in the first chapter) this tom was born in the year 1960 - which means that this chapter is set in 1975. :))
> 
> (also, apologies for any and all errors!! i'll come back through and edit this again when i'm a little more awake.)

On his journey to Glasgow, Tom stays overnight in the Lake District.

The place that he plans to disembark is a tiny village named Mould-on-the-Wold, lying almost invisible in the shadow of Helvellyn. Like the name might suggest, the village is built on a bland, grassy flat that could very well exist in any part of the country and look just the same: dry stone walls, clusters of hardy trees, and a patchwork of farmland. The train passes fields of grazing sheep bisected by little country lanes, and it isn't until the mountains come into view through the thick mist that Tom even realises they are approaching his rest stop.

Lake Thirlmere wraps around the back of the Wold, blanketing the village so thoroughly in fog that Tom does not see the station until they are pulling in. Only one other person gets off the train at the same time - a frail old lady with two walking sticks and a severely hunched back. Tom moves to the other end of the empty train compartment, to avoid being stuck behind her.

It needn't matter, really, as once he is upon the platform he takes his time to peer about. When booking his ticket, Tom had many stay-over options in various towns and cities, or even the choice to get an overnight train straight through to Glasgow. Both, though, would have cost him a small fortune. And so it was that he selected a long, winding route via the countryside with many switch-overs and pit stops. Cheaper by at least £15, all said. The downside is that he will be staying in the middle of nowhere until the first train arrives at dawn, but even then Tom has purposefully dressed down. He will be unassuming in his current attire, and thus safe to remain in the station or perhaps on a nearby bench, if nothing else.

For now, Tom breathes in the country air - a curious blend of manure and damp rock - and studies the overfilled flower boxes along the walls of the small ticket office. Purple budding flowers that he does not recognise, clustered between great draping blankets of ivy. There are old fashioned lanterns at either end of the station, a rickety bridge from one side to the other, and a wrought iron gate leading, Tom presumes, down to the main road.

A sticklike man with greasy hanks of hair and a sour expression sweeps the platform, a long furred tabby weaving between his legs. He pauses to glower in Tom's direction, over the collar of his stained trenchcoat, and the cat turns its bulbous amber eyes on him too.

Tom smiles a pleasant smile at them both, imagining snapping the wretched creature's neck or maybe drowning it in the lake, and hanging it up above the ticket office doorway by its bottlebrush tail. The man grumbles and turns away without a word, and the cat follows at a trot.

Seeing that the old lady is making progress towards the exit and that he could be stuck behind her for an indeterminate amount of time, Tom spins on his heel and walks hurriedly through the gate. As he's wandering down a series of narrow brick steps to the dim street beyond, he steadies his breathing. He is weary and bored from so many hours spent motionless on the train. The idea of pushing the woman down the stairs might have proven too tempting.

There is, thankfully, a cheap B&B close to the station. It's a grey stone building with a box garden set up against the roadside, full of shorn grass and little else. The swinging sign to the left of the door reads, _Kendra's Respite_ , and there is a poster board by the weedy gravel path declaring, ' _Great Views! Affordable Prices! Best Bed & Breakfast In The Lakes!_' The handwriting is smudged. Tom isn't particularly convinced, but then he's also a teenager with very little money and no better options. After a split second of consideration, he drags his trunk over the lawn.

When he steps inside, he is hit by a stifling wall of heat. It was not particularly cold out in the evening air, Tom thinks with bemusement, already foreseeing a night lying atop overstarched sheets, sticky skinned and flushed.

The lady at the front desk looks up from her copy of _Woman_. Tom's eyes skip between her thin, painted face and the bright cover of the magazine (on which is an unflattering paparazzi shot of a permed lady eating a panini, with the caption, ' _Cher's Juicy Lovelife Tips!_ '). At the woman's stare, Tom conjures a smile that he hopes reads as sheepish, with a ducked chin and eyes glancing through his lashes. He wipes his feet on the doormat and edges into the room, his free hand gripping the straps of his duffel.

He knows how he must look to her: a boy clearly no older than 16, dressed in ratty old jeans and a tracksuit jacket, carrying enough luggage to be a runaway. Still, he explains with as much patience as possible that he's 'visiting family', and soon enough the lady relents. Apparently, fussing about an underage teenager traveling alone is more a cursory thought than a legitimate compulsion, because once she's satisfied that she's made her concern known, she takes down his details.

"Billy Stubbs," he says, affecting a cockney accent with the ease of many years practice. Lying to adults is at this point second nature to him - an old, familiar habit that might bother him for its predictability, if only it hadn't served him well over the years. He reels off Billy's date of birth and creates contact information for his 'legal guardians' since he claims to have no passport.

The lady takes his money, points him in the direction of the stairs, and gets back to reading her magazine.

With that out of the way, Tom hauls his bags up the staircase and hunts down the placard for his door. The key jams briefly in the lock, requiring a little extra force, but eventually gives.

Tom sets his scarce belongings down in his tacky yellow room - bedecked in too much floral print and lino, with a faux-leather headboard and a stained cream nightstand - and heads straight back out to grab a cheap dinner, since he hasn't eaten all day. This time when he walks through the foyer by the woman, he doesn't spare her any attention. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her bouffant hair bob.

There's a small off-license at the corner of the main road, selling very little other than some prepackaged sandwiches and a bleak selection of crisps. He grabs a slightly suspicious cheese and chutney roll, a packet of Salt'n'Shake, a plain Cadbury's bar, and a can of Coke. Enough, he thinks, for the rest of the night and the journey tomorrow. Tom is used to small meals, and isn't inclined towards overindulging when it comes to either eating or spending what little money he has. Above all else, Tom is practical. He consumes little excess in order to keep himself fit. His looks are, after all, one of his finest attributes.

He finds no pleasure in food, the way that many people seem to; then again, Tom finds little pleasure in anything at all. He simply moves from one goal to the next, chasing after something that he cannot yet identify...

Lost in thought, the teenager pauses at the counter, midway through picking up his bag of shopping. The street beyond the window is dark, and through the fog the sky is a deep, indigo blue. Above the village juts up the ragged silhouette of Helvellyn like some mighty stone giant. There's a single lamp several paces from the front of the shop, casting the road in a ruddy orange glow. On the other side of the street, on a rough stone wall, he spots the hunched outline of a girl.

With a vague thanks in the direction of the shop worker, Tom leaves. The bell chimes overhead as he steps outside and, across from him, the girl looks up. It's then that Tom gets his first real look at her.

She's a young thing, perhaps a year or two below him, with jam jar glasses and dark hair split into lank pigtails on either side of her face. She's wearing a truly atrocious set of dungarees, and even from this distance, Tom can tell that she's been bawling her eyes out.

When their eyes meet, that rare spark of _something_ curls in his chest. He is helpless but to cross the road, walking towards her in a stilted manner, a marionette controlled by a nameless, faceless force. He is possessed and he must, he _has to_ approach her. He cannot pass her by. _Destiny._ He hears the word echoing through his mind. _Fate._

Only once he's a foot or so from her does he stop. She's short, all curled up as she is, and he is long-legged for his age, just scraping by without being lanky. He doesn't know what makes him do it, but he reaches inside of his bag, filling the dead street with the crinkle of plastic. When his fingers brush the wrapper of the chocolate bar, he retrieves it and extends it towards the girl in offering.

"You look like you need this more than I do," he hears himself say from somewhere far off, the words soft. He does not feel the smile tugging at his lips.

Her watery eyes peer up at him over the rims of her glasses, and she breathes hard through a snotty nose. The sound is filthy. _Rude_. Tom wishes to smash her face against the wall until it concaves for the offense. His smile twitches, but remains in place.

"Why?" she asks at length, her Cumbrian accent a pleasant lilt on an otherwise reedy voice. "Who are you?" Despite her apparent suspicion, she reaches out and snatches the bar from him. No word of thanks. The spark glows brighter inside of him, his hunger an aching void.

Tom watches, fingers itching to wrap around her throat, as she toys with the edge of the wrapper. "My name...? I'm Billy," he says easily. The lie is as smooth as silk. He offers a shrug. "I don't like seeing pretty girls cry."

The girl flushes red - wholly unattractive, even in the gloom. She shoves the chocolate bar into the front pocket of her dungarees and glowers up at him. "I'm _not_ pretty."

He tilts his head, affects a frown. "Says who?"

" _All_ the girls at school. They just," she pauses to sniffle. "They just pick on me. 'Moaning Myrtle' this, 'Moaning Myrtle' that. It's _horrid_."

Girls, especially whiny, self-piteous creatures like this one, are inconsequential to Tom. He has encountered many of them in his time at Wool's, and he can sooner relate to her bullies than to her. Still, his pulse bucks. Sweat gathers along the nape of his neck despite the freshness of the night.

"Your name is Myrtle?" he asks, and takes the opportunity to sink down onto the wall beside her, close enough that their shoulders brush. Yes, he thinks. A perfect name for her. How had he not known it? "A lovely name for a lovely girl."

He worries, for a moment, that he's laid it on too thick.

But then her mouth wobbles up into a smile and she glances at him from the corner of her eye, suddenly shy, and he can tell that he's caught her.

"What are you doing out here all alone, so late at night?" His voice is a purr, his dark eyes magnets. "Won't your family miss you?"

She makes another face - this time a roll of her eyes. "My parents are out on _date night_. I was supposed to stay 'round at _Olive Hornby's_ house because they think I'm too young to be home alone." She sniffs, and it catches on the mucus in her throat. "Olive started saying all sorts of nasty things, just like usual, so I ran out. That's why I'm here."

Tom makes a sympathetic noise, and settles his free hand slowly on her back. Her heat rises up to his palm. She doesn't shy away from the comforting touch, so he rubs a soft circle. Breathes in the smell of unwashed hair and talc. "Do you want to talk about it?" he asks, conciliatory.

...

It just so happens that she does.

And much later, once he's helped calm her down, he offers to walk her back to Olive's house.

Only they pass a dank, dark public toilet in the small park on the way back, and Tom's senses rush out of him.

The world spins. Tilts. He moves without realising it; he is not a man now but a beast, and Myrtle is his prey.

He hems her in against the open doorway of the small building, walks her backwards until she is trapped in the confined space. The stink of piss and bleach burns all the way down to his lungs. Growing nervous, she asks what he is doing. The words wash over him as if spoken in a foreign language.

With slow purpose, he empties his purchases into the metal sink, one by one. The roll, the packet of crisps, the can. Rustles and a quiet _clunk_. When she tries to dash past him, he hauls her back inside by her pigtail, into the corner by the single cubicle. It is almost pitch-black, and there is no light to make out her wide-eyed panic. It does not stop him from enjoying the act of smothering her screams. Hot wet breath against his hand. Grease from her cheeks on his fingers.

She is loud, and warm, and soft in the same way that his dear ginger tomcat was. Pliant and strong, twisting to try and break his hold. His arms flex in order to keep his grip on her, and he revels the thought of how he will ache in the aftermath of this precious moment.

Tom presses her up against the cold cement wall, forces the plastic bag over her head, and pins her in place while she suffocates. The muscles in his arms tense to hard, chorded lines as she flails about, clawing at his wrists, his hands, his face. His breath is loud in his ears, and adrenaline is a fiery brand through his veins, a surge of liquid gold. His forehead prickles with sweat, his teeth grit. He rides high on the buzz of it as her body, first thrashing, then rigid, falls finally limp.

After several more minutes choking her (' _the body passes out first, from a lack of oxygen,_ ' he recalls reading in a 1957 book titled _Profiling Killers_ by author Alastor Moody, and knows that her stillness does not mean that she's dead) he lets her weight guide her into a slump by the cubicle door. Trembling, his insides alight, he checks her for a pulse through the barrier of the plastic. There is none. Tom retrieves the warped bag and the untouched chocolate bar from her pocket, and leaves her where she is. He regrets it, regrets that he does not get to study her expression, that it was over so soon. He would have liked to paint her face, ever frozen, in his mind.

He eyes the dirty puddle flooding the concrete floor, and wonders dazedly if the police might be able to retrieve solid evidence of his involvement from the way that he conducted himself tonight. His hand on her back. His skin under her nails from the struggle. The worker in the corner shop when he'd first spotted her. Tom looks down at her, and knows that there is little that he could do to remedy this situation. There is much here, a foolish amount really, that could incriminate him. If he had the time and inclination then he might try to find a way of setting up someone else.

Unable to muster any concern, he retrieves his dinner from the sink.

The rest of the night passes him by in a blur. He doesn't recall the walk back to the B&B. He doesn't remember sleeping. By the time his mind has returned to his body, it's early the following morning and he's tucked away on his next train.

There are bloody furrows on his wrists, and he thinks his chest is bruised where she struck him with her balled up fists...

It is strange, how it happened. How naturally it all fell into place, as if it were meant to be. Tom wonders if this is what they call divine intervention. Surely it must have been fated, for them to meet as they had.

Around this point, another thought settles over him: when he dies, if such a place exists, then he is going to Hell. This, he feels with a certainty that ought to rattle him. He should by all logic be terrified of death, and by the judgment that will be brought down on him for sullying his soul.

Does he believe in Hell, though? He certainly hadn't entertained any religious ideology back when the Orphanage had enforced attendance at the local church. The only part of the experience that he'd found meaningful was stealing coins from the collection plate as it had made its rounds at the end of each service. Even that had grown dull when it proved too simple a feat. Christianity as a practice has always seemed rather banal.

If he doesn't feel fear at the thought of damaging his soul, then what about him being discovered as Myrtle's murderer? At the thought of imprisonment? At the chance of having ruined his own future? Should he not be nervous, now that the frenzy which drove him has faded?

No. All he feels in emptiness. The fire that raged through him has already burnt out.

For the first time ever Tom finds himself wondering if he is a psychopath. Or in the very least, mentally unsound. Homicide is perhaps not the most typical of human behaviours, though he _does_ believe it to be an innate driving force. Violent inhibitions are not always detrimental to the human psyche, surely.

But he remembers the psychopathological tendencies listed in Moody's book: lack of empathy; mythomania; narcissism. Tom enjoys inflicting harm on others and feels no compassion for those that are suffering. Despite being a natural manipulator, he finds it difficult to understand all but others' basest compulsions. They eat and breathe and sleep as he does, but there are nuances in the average human's life that seem so alien to Tom, although he has learnt through years of trial and error how to emulate them. Admiration in lingering looks. Amusement in the quirk of a smile or a huff of breath.

Thinking on it now, he does not know if he has ever felt anything. Not fear, or sadness, or even anger. His volatile outbursts are driven by something indefinable. Irritation, perhaps? But no. When he falls into one of his moods, it's as if he is a starving man set down at a feast. He wishes to gorge himself on life, and yet no matter how much he eats, he finds himself, always, wanting more.

Is it truly unnatural, to be the way that he is? To see the inferiority of the general populace, and to embrace himself as something better? He is an apex predator, a snake winding its way through a hoard of filthy mice. He is clean, free of the emotional ties that are so hampering in the everyday. How could acknowledging and acting upon that ever be wrong? Tom is not evil, because there is no such thing. Perhaps he is a psychopath or some similar creature, and perhaps he will be caught. But death is just death, and what he does in life will bear little consequence for him, when he is in his grave.

These thoughts, like all of the previous, pass over him with no disruption to his calm. Mentally unsound or not, he is who he is.

In his pocket, his fingers run up and down the side of the chocolate bar. He will not eat it; he'll keep it to remember her by - his sweet, Moaning Myrtle.

Briefly, he is inspired to write about her the way that Humbert Humbert wrote about his Lolita - _would_ , if he'd ever been the sort to keep a diary. The loss leaves him aching.

Soon enough, though, the thought is lost. She was not his inspiration - just a passing fancy.

...

For weeks following little Myrtle's demise, the dreams grow more vivid.

He is in the graveyard again, stepping through a thick, white fog like the one that settled over the Wold. Old stone, dirt and mildew fill his lungs with every deep inhale. The air is cold - the night draws in around him. His skin is clammy, too tight around his joints as if it has been stretched thin.

Before him, pinned against a large tombstone, is a boy.

Green eyes. Dark hair. A scar. Blood, trickling down his forearm in bold lines.

Tom crowds in close, so close that every panting breath from the boy's mouth unfurls, warm, against his face.

" _I can touch you now_ ," he hears himself say. The words are high and sharp.

He raises a hand, bares his teeth in a parody of glee, finger outstretched to press against that scar, that _lightning bolt_ \--

Always, always, he awakes with a jolt right before he makes contact.

He can feel the ghost of the boy's gasps spilling across his lips for hours after.

...

And perhaps, were he to have feared death from the very beginning of this life, things would turn out differently.

 _Perhaps_.

But he will not learn fear until it is too late:

Too late to right his wrongs;

Too late to change his ways;

Too late to become human.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... have i scared any of you off, yet?


End file.
